10 Days and Counting!
What to do when ZESA (our electricity) has been off for 10 days and still counting:
- Eat lots off meat and invited your neighbors as your freezers aren't keeping up with the heat!
- Save your solar back-up so that you have fan for part of the night to keep you cool.
- Go swimming before you go to bed to cool off!
- Get all the X-rays and Lab work all ready to go before you turn on the generator so you can run it for the shortest time possible.
- Get used to not reaching anyone on their phone because they can't be charged!
- Take cold showers every morning and dream of warm showers!
- Tell your new visitors there really is electricity at times--since they haven't seen it since they arrived a week ago!
- Overhear visitors deciding they will give up electricity for lent!
- Swim at lunch time to cool off because there are no fans at the hospital in your office.
- Call ZESA everyday and hear from them it will be fixed by tomorrow and then when you call the next day they said it is not fixed because they sent no one to work on it that day, so it will be tomorrow!
We had 4 visitors arrive from Ohio State Medical School on Sunday night last week. Megan, Erica, Lindsay and Matt have joined us for 3 weeks at the hospital and then a week of traveling. They seem to be enjoying it--even with no electricity!
Zebedee Togarepi from Chiredzi joined us from Sunday night until Tuesday morning working with our secondary school. We enjoyed having him with us. He is a minister and works with an orphanage and churches near Chiredzi.
We had visitors on Wednesday and Thursday: Dr. David Katzenstein from Stanford, Caroline, his assistant from Harare and her son TJ who is their driver. We spent time discussing new research we want to do with viral loads for our AIDS patients.
Friday Major and Dr. Munodawafa and I left at 4 a.m. to attend our hospital board meeting in Harare for our 3 hospitals and 3 clinics at my townhouse in Harare at 9 a.m. We arrived just on time and the meeting finished at 1 p.m. when we then took off to run around and do errands before leaving about 7:30 p.m. to come home. We arrived at 1 a.m.--a long and tiring day! Of course Saturday I needed to be up by 6:30 a.m. to get breakfast ready by 8 a.m. for the students before we went to the hospital to work.
Major and I leave Thursday for the States so we are on fast mode to try and get all caught up and leave the hospital doing well when we leave, doesn't help to have no electricity!
Rain continues to be very little with some drops in between a lot of very hot days. Keep praying for rain. Our rivers and lakes need it. Also pray for ZESA to come back one of these "tomorrows!"
Megan, Kathy, Lindsay, Erica and Matt from Ohio State Medical School
Good morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because through them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Zimbabwe? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Zimbabwe in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Calle Valencia, 39
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez